And anyone, of course, who thinks California's gun laws are not sufficiently draconian is absolutely horror-struck at the thought of how much less tyrannical, relatively speaking, federal laws are. It comes as no surprise, then, that a United States Senator from California would lead the charge to put the entire nation under the thumb of California-style "gun control."

Senator Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) "Pause for Safety Act" is somewhat similar to a law being pushed at the state level there. In both cases, people concerned about a family member's mental health would be empowered to block that individual's right to purchase firearms, and even to have currently owned firearms confiscated. As National Gun Rights ExaminerDavid Codrea writes in Guns Magazine, that legislation, touted as a "gun violence restraining order," ignores both the fact that California law already provides law enforcement with powerful mechanisms to force involuntary psychiatric commitment, and that depriving a person of his or her Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms--on hearsay--raises serious questions about due process.

• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.

Hmm . . . "families and others"? Well, what "others"? Lovers? Friends? People one regularly sees at the bus stop? And you have to love the idea that the confiscators can make "full use of all existing gun registries." In many states, thankfully, there are no such registries, but does anyone think that passage of Boxer's legislation would not embolden "gun control" jihadists to demand the registries, to "make the law work properly"?

Further details of Boxer's Intolerable Act are hard to find--at this point, there doesn't seem to be even a bill number. Still, in the Congressional Record from Monday, Boxer left some hints, and they are as disturbing as one might imagine:

No. 1, families and others who are very close to the suspected unstable individual can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.

Again with the "others." And now we find out who at least some of these "others" are:

Let's say it is a group of coworkers who see that this person is threatening or he has written something.

Oh--coworkers. Good thing no one has a group of coworkers who might have a sufficiently malignant agenda to have them disarmed out of sheer spite, or for that matter, for a more directly malevolent motivation.

No. 2, it would help ensure that families and others close to the individual can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant which would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that already have been purchased. If those police officers had known this individual had bought those weapons--because we do have that database--they could have gone and gotten the warrant. But under our bill, a family member could do this. They could go to court and seek that gun violence prevention warrant.

She sure likes that firearm "database," doesn't she? She sure seems to want it to metastasize from California to the entire nation.

No. 3, if law enforcement gets a tip or a warning or a request from a family member, they can then make full use of a gun registry if it exists in their state. It is very important for law enforcement to make use of the gun registry if it exists.

Yep--this bill is starting to look more and more like a vehicle to push a gun registry. And by the way, warnings about de facto gun registries have just gotten a bit more ominous, haven't they? The fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seems to be seeking the power to demand gun sales information from every gun shop that sells two or more semi-automatic, detachable magazine-fed rifles within five days--even to separate buyers--becomes even more unforgivable.

Boxer's Congressional Record comments, by the way, included something else very . . . interesting, although it does not seem to refer specifically to her bill:

I am not saying we ban guns or we ban people from having guns--no--but that we have a system where they have to show they need it.

Wow. A need-based "may issue" system, for gun purchases, rather than for carrying a firearm in public, which even the notoriously "progressive" 9th Circuit Court of Appeals--whose jurisdiction includes California--has deemed unconstitutional. And Boxer calls such a system a "commonsense step."

Boxer wants us to prove we "need" a gun? The fact that people like her presume to write the laws by which the rest of us would be required to live is all the proof necessary.

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A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He writes a gun rights blog, called Armed and Safe.